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THE NEW SOUTH 



A DISCOURSE 



Delivered at the Annual Commencement of Hamp- 
den Sidney College, June 15TH, 1882, 

BEFORE THE PHILANTHROPIC AND 

Union Literary Societies. 






By Rev. R. L. DABNEY, D. D., LL. D., 

Professor in Union Theological Seminary, Virginia. 



MAR' 8 i 1884 






RALEIGH, N. C: 

EDWARDS, BROUGHTON & CO., STEAM PRINTERS AND BINDERS. 



~+ 



•}- 



T2I5 
■ D.l'ZS 



ADDRESS. 



Young Gentlemen of the Philanthropic and Union Societies, 

And Ladies and Gentlemen of the Audience : 

You will credit my expression of sincere embarrassment at this time when you 
consider that I am attempting a species of discourse somewhat unwonted to a 
preacher of the Gospel, and yet more, that I am placed here only as a species 
of Dernier Ressort. We all had hopes that another gentleman would represent 
the two Literary Societies, better fitted to entertain and instruct this assemblage. 
But disappointment left the place, at a very late period, unfilled, and we were 
threatened with having this important part of our literary anniversary left a 
mere blank. I stand here, therefore, in the formula of your exercises very 
much in the place of that " infinitesimal quantity," which the algebraist places 
equal to zero in his equation, without appreciable error. 

This fact might have led me to decline the untimely effort, but we who are- 
passing off the stage of public action owe a sympathy to the young who are en- 
tering on it, which should forbid our withholding any service or evidence of 
affection they may ask of us. It is this which has forbidden my saying No to 
your request. 

In your case there is another weighty consideration which ought to reinforce 
your claim on us for a deep sympathy. This is found in the momentous diffi- 
culties of the ARENA on which the young men of the coming generation arc 
called to act their part. And yet another thought crosses the mind. Ought 
the knowledge of the difficulties which are before you to stimulate the expres- 
sion of our interest, or ought it to dictate a modest)', which should silence us as 
advisers of our young countrymen? For it is by our hands that these cruel 
conditions of your life-problem have been transmitted to you. The heritage of 
freedom which our fathers left us, we have not been able to bequeath to you. 
As memory reverts to my youth, when I stood where you now stand, it pre- 
sent- a contrast which might well seal my lips with grief and shame. Then my 
honored father and grandfather were just going off the stage, the one a soldier 
of the first war which won our independence, and the other of the second war 
which confirmed it, both examples of that citizen-soldiery which had been the 
glory of America, plain, simple, unpretending, but incorruptible. And Vir- 
ginia then stood, with untarnished escutcheon, poor indeed from the burdens of 
two wars, and the legislative exactions of her partners in the Union, clad mostly 
in homespun, but still the "great and unterrified commonwealth" which ex- 
torted this tribute from Cornwallis in his hour of victory: " mother of States- 
men and States," whose humblest citizen knew no master except God and the 
law of his own State's election, whose banner had never trailed before a con- 
queror, by whom no federal obligation had ever been dishonored, and no cred- 



2 Address. 

jtor ever defrauded oi one penny; with a cr Id in th inns 

firm and prudent mediator between federal power and the two 

impatient spirit of her si - I cm hers t ran sn to our 

trrior-virgin, like the Pallas-Athene of Phidias, as she stood 

i the Ww ' ihing the radiance of her golden helm and full-orbed 

■ and Salami s, to far off Msegara and 

Lhit ou, not. How? a pallid, wofnl 

i ! i iwered by subjugation, dismembered of her fair proportions, her 

I erven by her own sons, virtually governed bj the votes of an 
alien and rous 1 her bosom by her late pa ; .■ now her 

nt protest ! 
As I i I myself, should not men who have so failed 

ichargc. who ha-. I itage of their fathers to be so marred 

es and be silent ? 
But our sons whom our weakness, or else our hard fate, has left disinh 
[of us ! They ask", they encourage us to speak. 
I ay to the " New i , . ■ ■ 
New Soi Our other endeavi 

I by our fathers, we did what we could. And in proof of this justi- 
*•( can point to the forms prematurely bent, an whitened 

by fatigues and camp diseases, to the empt nd to 

hickl ovei the land. Our apol 

while we wi e rights and interests of the civili 

: ely arrayed itsel 

was : issioi I I . that we, whil ' : cause ol 

md misunderstood by all. But -A I I say this 

fearful dispensation was strange? when we see that from the days of the chris- 

nd sought to i >y its 

I ors. So it w; ; v : had the world against us. There was, after all, 

litth i ion'Hvhich the <.'• infei ! nary 

Ridge, with the 1 i ggeration of his class, gave ol case. Said 

d ever disturbed him until al 
dawn of that dis: ing post on the advam 

on Lookout Mountain, just when ginning to pale i 

dawn, and all nature in expectancy of the coming kii 

ken by the words of command, rolling from the 
Vaii'. over the i in these terms: '"Attention World ! Na- 

orward ! Wheel into lincol battle." Yes, we had 
the wi n I : ;a in I us. 

And this is i for that fact which completes our apol 

failui [iien't events have shown we were attempting to defend and 

tern of free government which had ble by reason 

of the change and deg m of the age. We did not believe this at the time, 

for we had not omniscience. Nay, it was, at that time, our duty not to know 
U, or to believe it, even as it is the luty of the loyal son not to believe the dis- 



Address. 

i i his venerable mother mortal, so long as hope - pi 
the efforts of his love, and not to surrender her to death while love and tender- 
ness can conte ' the pri e. We had received this fiee government from cur 
fathers, baptized in their blood ; we had received from them the sacred injunc- 
tion to preserve it. We had vvilm neficent results. Of all men. r 
was o Ives most bound by the maxim of the Roman rep 

i u /as est de fapublka disperar-e. Th< h n e had il ntly taken 
place, which rendered our falhei ■ 

cute i (ret il would have been, ti truth and right for us to despair 

of the better possibility, until tl ibility stood sternly revealed. Thus 

the ' i duty and Providence assigned us was, to demonstrate bj 

own defeat, after inl i , the u»fitn< 

we would fain have preserved for them. Hard I iny to at- 

I but one which has often been exacted by a mysteri 
Providence from the votaries of duty. Yet it gives us this harsh consolation, 
that inasmuch as the i stem had become impractici 

ure in the effort to preserve it might be incurred vvithou 

ihere is thi if the 

justification to wl 

act i: drawn m the Be- 

cause the old free system h ossible foi 

will be justified in living and acting i . There will bean 

trent paradox in this ; that yen shall applaud and revere your l 
their < osition to form- e and 

• sustain. But the paradox will be only in £ 
be foui 

duty to di fend, because they still r, be- 

cause you have learned by our in no exist. 

'■Anew Si inevitable, ; nil be right for you to ai 

it, though it was our duty i prevent it. It may I to. 

morrow to "bury the m it was the father's 

... keej alive. 

The government our fathei left 
As such they emerged from . 

inch they mi . .... ei union." 

ach they d d the term d therefor, 

(for at first did 

nev. union.) By then ral and si vereign rets the) entralfed- 

iment, with limit* , and deputed to this 

own citize I \er- 

the equal behoof of all the pa 
of judging and redressing vital infr; 

I expressly reserved to or to theii 

world they were to be one, ither the}- were to be still equr.ls and it 

pendent partners. Each State must be a republic, as di 
monarchy or oligarchy, but in all else it was to be mistress ol its own in 



4 Address. 

forms and regulations. The functions of the general government were to he 
few and defined, its expenditures modest, and its burdens in time of peace light. 
Such was the form of government instituted for themselves by our free fore- 
fathers; and well fitted to their genius and circumstances, as communities of 
farmers, inhabiting their own home-,, approaching an equality of condition, and 
having upon the whole continent no one city of controlling magnitude or wealth. 

But this century has seen all this reversed ; and conditions of human society 
have grown up, which make the system of our free forefathers obviously im- 
practicable in the future. And this is so, not because the old forms were not 
good enough for this day, but because they were too good for it. 

I. I would place as the first of these adverse conditions the silent substitu- 
tion, under the same nomenclature, of another theory of human rights, in con- 
trast with, and hostile to, that of our fathers. Those wise men did indeed be- 
lieve in a certain equality of all men ; but it was that which the British consti- 
tution (whose principles they inherited) was wont to express by the maxim : that 
every British citizen " was equal before the law." The particular franchises of 
the peer and the peasant were very unequal, but in this important respect the 
two men were "equal before the law," that the peasant's smaller franchises 
were protected by die same law which shielded the peer's larger one. This is 
the equality of the golden rule, the equality of that Bible which ordained the 
constitution of human society out of superiors, inferiors and equals ; the equal- 
it}- of the inspired Job (ch. 31 : 13-15) who in the very act of asserting his right 
to his slave, added : " Did not he that made me make him ? If I did despise 
the cause of my man-servant or my maid-servant when they contended with 
me, what then shall I do when God risethup?" This is the equality which is 
thoroughly consistent with that wide diversity of natural capacities, virtues, 
station, sex, inherited possession-, which inexorable fact discloses everywhere 
and by means of which social organization is possible. But in place of this, 
the equality taught by Hampden, Vane, Pym, Melville, and the Whigs of 1776, 
our modern politician now teaches, under the same name, the equality of the 
jacobin, of the '"Sansculotte,"' which absurdly claims for every human the 
same specific powers and rights. Yes, your Greeley teaches, as the equality of 
Republicanism, the very doctrine of the frantic Leveller Lilbum, whose book 
these great English Republicans caused (not your tyrannical Stuart but the 
commonwealth's-men) to be burned in London by the common hangman ! 

Our fathers valued liberty, but the liberty for which they contended was 
each person's privilege to do those things and those only to which God's law 
and Providence gave him a moral right. The liberty of nature which your 
modern asserts is absolute license ; the privilege of doing whatever a corrupt 
will craves, except as this license is curbed by a voluntary "social contract." 
The fathers of our country could have adopted the sublime words of Melville : 
Lex: Rex. The Law is king. Or have said with Sir Win. Jones : 
Men constitute a State : 
And sovereign LAW', that State's collected will, 

O'er thrones and globes elate, 
Sits Empress, ci owning good, repressing ill. 



Address. 5 

Smit by her sacred frown, 
The fiend (Construction) Discretion like a vapour sinks. 

And even the all-dazzling crown, 
Hides his faint rays, and at her bidding shrinks. 

But now, by this new Republicanism, the supreme law is the will or caprice 
of what happens to ho. ike major mob, the suggestion of the demagogue who is 
most artful to seduce. 

These are a few items of the new creed, which lias stolen the nomenclature 
of the old. Since it is a theory at all essential points antagonistic to the old, 
its prevalence cannot but supplant those sound institutions which were the nat- 
ural outgrowth of the orthordox doctrine. 

2. When our former constitution was adopted, America contained no metn >p- 
i >lis, not even any city of note ; there were a few trading towns, of which each 
State had oaie or more, and of which neither had any effectual ascendancy over 
the others. Hence State equality was practicable, and could be effectively 
something more than a name. But now, the great empotium of this continent 
has made herself, by virtue of natural advantages co-operating with partial 
legislation, commercial mistress of all, and asserts a financial ascendancy which 
brings the business and the welfare of the whole country to her feet. It used 
to be said that in England " all roads lead to London." So, in this vast con- 
tinent, all railroads tend to New York, or those which vainly attempt to reject 
her dominion soon feel it in the form of empty trains and vanished revenues. 
Now, in view of that truth announced by Solomon, that " money answereth 
all things," can a sensible man persuade himself that political independence 
and equality can permanently remain in a land where financial -despotism has 
become established? " The borrower is servant to the lender." The political 
subjection must, sooner or later, follow the financial. 

3. Our century has witnessed a general change of social conditions by means 
of the marvelous applications of science and mechanic art to cheapen trans- 
portation and production. Once the commonwealth owned all the highways 
by water and by land, and each private citizen might become a carrier if he 
chose. Now the highway's are the property of great carrying corporations, who 
command more men as their disciplined employes than the government's own 
standing army, before whose revenues the whole incoanes of commonwealths 
are paltry trifles ; to whose will legislatures hasten to bow. Each of these 
roads point virtually to New York. To that city, yes, to one corner of Wall 
street in that city, centre all their debts, their loans, their revenues, their chief 
management. 

This centralization is as remarkable also in the producing arts. The lime was 
when manufactures were literally domestic — the occupations of Jhe people in 
their homes. The industrious producing citizen was a " free-holder, " a name 
whose vital significance to British liberty our times have almost forgotten. He 
dwelt under his own roof-tree. He was his own man ; he was the fee-simple 
owner of the homestead where his productions were created by the skill and 
labor of himself and his children, apprentices and servants. Now all this is 



6 Address. 

fed ; the loom is no tongci heanS in the home ; vast -factories, owned 
monopolists for whom the cant of the age lias already found their appropriate 
" kings of industry,'" now undersell the home products everywhere. 
The a hoe which the husbandman wields, on.ee made at th 

:, theshoe placed on hi set, the plow with which he turns the < 

the very helve in his tool, all come from the factory. The home irxl 
the house ing h c ov n y isl can hardly survive, but is su 

; yo n i. i tory ' baking powders," in which che have 

full play. Thus production is centralized. Capital is collected in com 

al s-ho i riding the free-hdlding citizen is sunk into the nmltiti 
hit I tic pi iletariat. Conditions of social organization are ag | iced, 
parallel to the worst results of feudalism, in their incompatibility with 
republican insl Ltu 

4. From the 1 1 n have ultecl the extreme in ol forti 

litures and luxury which now deform American society. When our late 
constitution was. enacted, American citizens en' 1 ;ral equality of for- 

ort, which made a real republic m equality of rights practicable. 
1 11 onl] aristoi a* ■' was that of intelligence and merit. The 1 idl- 

est citizen was only a farmer, somewhat more abounding than his neighboi 
the breadth of his fields. A British writer, endeavoring to trace in lire n 
ii ,n society the existence of a gen try 1 could, rind no greater incomes than th 
W; d'i., ;ton, of Alt. Vernon, and Carroll, of Can I pos- 

$20,000 per annum. And the Mt. Vernon mansion red in! 

d< -t that he spoke of itas "the cottage," in!: bitedl proprii tor. But 

1 1 , ■ "king oi kudu 1[ . " count their incom :s by almost as many 
<- day. Set the more than regal luxury of a Vanderbilt, in bis g 
palace b : the hireling laborer ift bis sordid tenemei I I in 
theoretical equal"! Vest] ' hence 

the pauper dinner of his cagg :d children, 
shall count for precisely as much as the vote 1 if a Vande rl kilt. This is the tneory. 
And this v\ by his 1 ahood suffrage, is he ? as to be thoroughly 
ith the mon Lrou i equalit\ of en and to hearken to no crav- 
mr, when he sees this rampant luxury flaunted before his mis- 
ery? And this lordl) milliot | pel dbyhisimmea m ble abi id: , will 

eel no lust of power, no ambition to add civic dominion to the plutocratic 
h he already po id he will be satisfi I to have the ignorant vote oi 

his hireling weigh precisely as much as his own in every legislative act touching 
'enure of his millions? He who know human nature sees that to expect this 
i-~ mere craziness. This enormous inequality in wealth will seel t, to 

assert itself in politics. But our new-fangled Republicanism asserts that, polit- 
ically, the Vanderbilt shall be the precise equivalent of the pauper. It leave 
rich man 1 rl ion of his superior weight or the pro- 

iperioi i" (he State. Wealth, then, must seek for 

itself illegitimate forms. And in obeying the inevitable impulse through tl 
illegal ways, it must corrupt itself, and the institutions of the land. 

5. The press has been looked to as the safe guardian of popular institutions. 



Address. 7 

It has been called by an English Whig "the fourth estate of the Realm." But 
the influences under wbich the political press in America operates con 
this also one of the fatal hindrances to the subsistence <>!' wise, free institu- 
tions. The powerful journals must be also the creatures of money. The con- 
ditions of journalism are such that only a vast capital can float a journal into a 
safe and permanent haven of success. Literature is a commodity, money buys 
and sells it. Let the genius of an Addison, a Bolingbrooke, a Junius, a Ma- 
caulay, all be combined on the one side, \ ilh all the richest resources of histori- 
cal learn ilisb the political truths which ha: unpopular without 
a great capi md let commercial capital give its support to the pen of the 
propagate the cm hich capital 
and corrupt interest, you shall see the wisdom of true 
statesmanship, embellished by ali the graces of scholarship consigned to an 
!:i. I obscurity it Lhe vulgar stupidities of error shall visit 
every table and cl [at Us it so and Mammon rules. 
The rea on is bc< tuse the leading presses of the commercial centres are either 
Is of parties and used for exclusive partisan purposes, or else thi 
he calico mills, mere joint-stock concerns for money making. Either 
way, the result is the same. The content - of tie journal are not dictated at ail 
]>v truth or right, hut solely by self-interest What doctrine shall it 
Only that which advances the strength ■ f the faction, or which attracts the 
Thus the < f being the guile, be- 
ophant of misguided t ublic opinion. Let only any \ 
heresy begin to be current enough to become an element of danger to sound 

tions, and ard it is i il t.and 

journals to give it their support. To resist and explode it "would not pay." 

6. One more change only, my tii mits me in state, which con 

render the system of our fathers a thing of the past. This is the invariable ex- 

, which has attended every politi 
This ti I racterized not only the violent revolution through which we 

but every modification of constitution made by the States. We 
e it working with equal certainty in the reform measures of on< 
servative England. In every state Constitution has been opened 

ge, that change lias been towards universal suffrage, unless this i 
had be< i ahead; reached; and in I case has a restriction of . 

been even attempted. There is at foi this fated law of pr< 

in the nature of the demagogue, and it may be said in passing, that this 
presents us the fatal weak point in the theory of popular government. The 
selfish calculations and instincts of these com rob, always prompt 

them to advocate every extension, no matter how unwise or destructive, and 
seal their lips from opposing it. Their calculation runs thus: Here is a new 
.horn some one has proposed to enfranchise. I know, as does every sen- 
sible man, that it is a folly. But perhaps the proposal may prevail. Hence, 
I cannot afford to oppose it, for should it prevail, the newly enfranchised 
they come to the polls, will remember my action against me. But if I am a 
forward advocate of it, their gratitude will make them vote for me. Thus the 



8 Address. 

craziest and most ruinous proposition to create a new class of voters, always has 
zealous assertors. and for the same reason it meets with no opposers who are 
effective. 

Such were the avowed motives [with sectional hatred and revenge] which 
prompted our conquerors to fix on the Southern half of the country that last 
extreme of political madness, the universal and unqualified suffrage of the slaves. 
And how deadly in their potency these motives of self-seeking are, we may see 
in this fact, that they even silence the protest of our own politicians ! There 
is not one of them who does not know that this measure is inevitably pregnant 
with the corruption and overthrow of honest, popular government; yet there is 
not one of them, who is a candidate for votes, who has the nerve to say what he 
thinks, or to demand a reversal of the criminal blunder. But when the leaders 
of the very people who are the first victims of this wrong, are too much intimi- 
dated to lift a finger for its correction, whence shall deliverance from the fatal 
incubus come ? There will be no deliverance until suffrage shall have been so 
foully corrupted by this and its other perversions, that a despairing and mined 
people take refuge from its intolerable tyrannies in the will of an autocrat, and 
the ignorant and venal cease to vote only when and because all will be forbid- 
den to vote. 

Whether just and free institutions can co-exist in such a country as this, with 
its vast population and inequalities of condition, along with this extravagance 
of universal suffrage, needs no debate. Do you remember the prophetic letter 
of Lord Macanlay to Mr. Randall, of New York ? Do you remember the 
homely instance by which a greater than Macanlay, and a more prophetic states- 
man, was wont to close his arguments in favor of that sheet anchor of liberty, 
free-hold suffrage? Mr. Randolph used to exclaim: "Sirs, the empty sack 
does not stand upright." In an advanced material civilization like ours, every 
political action touches property somewhere. If the vote which represents no 
property is made of equal weight with the vote which represents large proj^erty, 
then, with such inequalities of wealth, with such ostentatious displays of the 
luxury of the few piquing the envy of the impoverished many, just so surely 
as men are men, greedy in desire, selfish and unrighteous, and the more un- 
righteous where their crime is wrapped up from the eye of conscience in the 
folds of associated action, two results must follow, are already following. The 
attempt of the proletariat and their demagogues to use their irresponsible suf- 
frage for plunder; the resistance of the capital-holding minority to this plunder. 
But for this resistance, though it be as inevitable as the instincts of self-preser- 
vation, your radical theory offers no recognized, legitimate mode. Radicalism 
ordains that the small shall be equal to the large; the dependent shall counter- 
weigh the independent; the vote which has nothing to lose, shall dispose of the 
vote of him who has all to lose. The result is, that self-defence invents ille- 
gitimate modes, and the unrighteous assault on property is met by the illegal 
use of property to protect itself and to inflate itself until the moral corruptions 
wrought in our politics fester to putrescence and dissolve the body. 

As we thus look back upon the social revolution which had established itself 
in our century, we see that political revolution had become unavoidable. The 



Address. 

assault on our rights and institutions was but the first wave of the cataclysm. 
It swept over our best resistance, because there were other waves behind it 
which are destined in turn to conquer our conquerors. He is a shallow man, 
indeed, who supposes that the revolution will pause at its present stage, leaving 
the conquering section ascendant, and rendering this unstable equilibrium of 
the moment peimanent. No, we have now seen but the first act of the drama, 
and it has been a tragedy. The curtain has fallen for the time to the music of 
a miserere, whose jarring chords have fretted the heartstrings of such as Lee and 
his comrades into death. It may well happen that after the fashion of the 
mimic stage, the next rise of the curtain may be accompanied by the garish 
lights of a deceitful joy, the blood stains of the recent tragedy covered with 
fresh saw dust, and the new actors ushered in with a burst of gay melody. But 
the other acts are to follow. .May they not be tragic also? 

That popular suffrage does not now really govern this country, that it is no- 
toriously a marketable commodity, that the United States have really ceased 
already to be what they pretend, a federation of republican States, no clear 
sighted man doubts. Under a thin veil of radical democracy, the government 
has already become an oligarchy. Are not State conventions traded off by the 
magnates as openly as blocks of railroad bonds ? Are not legislatures bought 
as really and almost as openly as cargoes of corn? Are not "corners" made 
in politics by which the weaker capitalists are sold cut, as really as in 
the pork market? It is Washington or Wall Street which really dictates 
what platforms shall be set forth, and what candidates elected and what 
appointments made, not the people of the States. Some of you may have 
heard of the incident which happened in our neighboring town, in that 
year when our Southern conservatives, in their wisdom, made Horace Gree- 
ley their standard-bearer, hoping, it seems, like the superstitious Jews, to 
"cast out devils through Beelzebub, the chief of the devils;" to retrieve 
the cause of order and right through the arch incendiary and agitator of the 
country. Several hopeful souls were arguing his success from the many signs 
of his acceptance with the people. It was said, whole radical towns, whole 
Union Leagues in the northwest were coming over to Greeley. A sagacious 
banker standing by quietly shook his head. Our friends, ah d at his 

skepticism, asked : " Why? do not all these accessions, with the Southern sup- 
port, promise him success ?" His answer was: "Gentlemen, I do business in 
Wall Street, and Wall Street does not want Greeley." And so the country did 
not have Greeley, and Greeley did not have the presidency he coveted, but went 
aside to die of chagrin. 

So Wall street saw in the third term imperialism thinly masked, and as its 
oligarchs preferred to be masters themselves, rather than have Grant their mas- 
ter and ours, Wall street sent to Chicago and nominated Garfield as its conve- 
nient lay-figure. But having carried its main point it really cared very little 
about the choice between him and Hancock, and for a time did not trouble 
itself. So the people were about to elect Hancock. But one fine morning 
this simple minded "beefeater" perpetrated the faux pas of endorsing the 
greenback victory in Maine. And now that Wall street saw that the Hancock 



io Address. 

regime was committed to " soft money," it did trouble its if, and woke up and 
put it:, hand to the canvass. It would none "1 Hancock and his soft money, and 
so the people could not have Hancock nor he have the presidency. 

msly the government now ascendant in the country while "Repul 
m nam; and ultra-democratic in theory, is an oligarchy in 'fact. Exti 
often thus meet. Nothing can be more fallacious than that view, advanced by 
oi our conciliatory statesmen, jvhich i - the recent revolutions as 

only a temporal)' excitement and \ rlial fit of excess from which the institutions 
of the country will re-act under prudent management and regain their old consti- 
tutional status. There will he no re-action in that sense. The morbid causes which 
were | verthrow will ) moi : certainly be powerful enough to resist 

and suppress the weak efforts of a crippled, prostrate constitution, The obsta- 
i les 1 Jtween a- and a return in p is preced :nts are too mountainou . ( m ider 
for!; 1 " poil.s system," now strong with a generation's growth. If 

it is to he perpetrated, this of itself makes popular constitutional government 
For every intelligent man sees that it converts.office -holders from 
servants of the people to paid agents for circumventing the people's will at the 
polls, paid with the money of the people they help to enslave. This is the 
very signature of de potism, that the citizen's money is taken to bribe agents 
for suppressing the citizen's will. Under this sy -tern the office-holders are the 
pretorian cohorts of the usurper. 

But let one think out now the conditions essential to the realizing of that 
"civil n i," ,vhich i cl p.artj | i > nds to promise, but which neither 

par;; b appropi i for the spoils system. One of the re- 

quisite conditions is that one of these ] ai tij i n ousting the other from power 
shall exercise the self-denial and magnanimity to leave all their rival's appi iin 
except those expressly punishable lor official malfeasance, undisturbed in their 
offices and salaiies. For if the victorious party is to signalize its a ion, 

won, we wil iosc, on service reform, by expelling all 

the • ' :-hokl :rs of the opposite an ! d :feated part}-, this will not he to inaug- 
the wholesome remedy, but only to repeat the abuse. And thus they 
re than ever ensure at the next turn of the wheel of fortune that their 
reinstated rivals would imitate their vindictive example, turn out all their new 
appointees and again he happy change. Let us sup xam- 

ple, that the people should again elect a conservative President ami that he 
should not, like poor .Mr. Tilden, submit at the bidding of Wall street to the 
robbery of himself and the people of America, but should be inaugurated ; 
shall he magnanimously leave every appointee, though an agent or a tool of the 
present sp I m, tun isturbed ? Then there is no official reward for his 

supporters who have toiled for his election. They must have worked for 
naught but an i mpting of (Hire patriotism. Whence is the money to 

come to wage the campaign when all will 'nave been notified in advance that 
there will be no way for them to repay themselves out of die public crib? It 
is well known that a national political campaign now costs as much as a mili- 
tary one, and that money is to it as essential as ," the sinew's oi war." Does 
any party in America possess this lofty patriotism? W ill either party thus 



Address. ii 

! for nothing: But let us i the incoming conservative shall 

make a pretext that the office-holders he finds in place have been there as 

oils-men," and turn them oul to make room for his supporters ; then the 

inevitable result is that the o] posing party will denounce him as a traitor to his 

civil service reform, and devote themselves to retaliation. Such are the 

which beset the abatement of this peril in America. " Canst thon 

draw, out Leviathan with a hook, or hi a corrl which thou lettest 

down ? Canst thou put a hook into his nose?" 

ire the fatal influ i itruct all return md ensuie the pn 

of the revolution. There is a new era and hence there must be a " New 
South." 

WHAT MANNER OF THING SI!. M.I, IT BE? To pi iiesyis 

in.' the proper part for us to ] lay who fell with the old South. For us a more 
appropriate. We shall claim our .■tid- 

ing our own principles, wh rated 

for it to to 1 of consulting our own self-respect. Justice to you re- 

quires thai leave you l< rour- own destiny in that new and un- 

tried sea into which you are launching. 

Hut there are some principles which we may safely inculcate on you, because 
whatever else may change these cannot change. The glory of our old inde- 
[ence and its history, the beneficence of the con!. les of our 

old on, concurred to teach us an exalted, perhaps an overweaning ap- 

preciation of the value of such political 5. Hut we do not forget 

that other people have had other forms of government, aristocratic or regal, 
and under them have had their share of the domestic virtues, of patriotism, of 
civilization, of Christianity. (But unci :r the illicit and dirty oligarchy of which 
nt regime is a virtual has ever had or can ever 

have anything but corruption, ignominy and vice.) Our best prayei 
that out of the present foul transition, a good Providence may i new 

to arise tolerable for honest men. The changes implied in the introduction 
of this new order may be accepted by the old confederates as old a rmity, 

a not distant death. They must Lie accepted by me as the inevitable. 
Bu the principles of truth and righteousne ternal : divin 

must be upheld under all Here, in one 

1, is the safe pole-star for the " New South ; " let them adopt the scriptu- 
ral | .red that they will ever be as true and just under any new regime 
ie that has passed away: " That righ calteth a nation, 
but sin is a reproach to a-y people. That "wisdom and knowledge shall be 
the stability of thy times, and strength of salvation ; the fear of the Lord i-> 
His treasure." That "he that walkelh righteously and speaketh uprightly ; he 
that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from holding of 
bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from 
beholding evil; he shall dwell on high: his place of defence shall be the muni- 
tion, of rocks." 

Some of the applications of these unchanging principles are obvious to expe- 
rience guided by truth. Permit me briefly to unfold three of these to you, 



12 Address. 

which are shown to be timely and momentous by the special temptations to 
which a subjugated people are exposed while passing of necessity under a new 
and conquering system. One of these plausible temptations is to conclude 
that the surest way to retrieve your prosperity will be to become like the 
CONQUERERS. This is an inference as false as it is specious ; the fact that your 
fathers are conquered may ground a good inference perhaps, that you should 
seek to be in some respects UNLIKE US. May you be unlike us in being more 
fortunate ! But a very brief observation of history will teach you that violent 
aggressors, in overthrowing their rivals, also usually prepare their own over- 
throw. Their calamities are only postponed to the second place. The Jaco- 
bins overthrew Louis XVI, but Bonaparte crushed the Jacobins, and Europe 
crushed Napoleon. Shall this lie the best reparation for the miseries of the 
fall of the Confederacy ; that you shall share, for a few deceitful days, the victors' 
gains of oppression, to be overwhelmed along with him in his approaching retri- 
bution? Be sure of one thing, " his curses will come home to roost." In order 
to escape the fearful reckoning, you must not only make yourselves unlike us 
but unlike them. 

" The North triumphed by its wealth," Here is the temptation to the New 
South, to which I already see ominous symptoms of yielding, to make wealth 
the idol, the all in all of sectional greatness. I hear our young men quote to 
each other the advice of the wily diplomat Gorstchacoff, to the beaten French: 
" Be strong." They exclaim : Let us develope ! develope ! develope ! 
Let us have, like, our conquerors, great cities, great capitalists, great factories 
and commerce and great populations ; then we shall cope with them. 

Now here is a path which will require of you the nicest discrimination, 
and the most perspicacious virtue and self-denial. On the one hand it is indis- 
putable that under our modem, material civilization, wealth is an essential ele- 
ment of national greatness. The commonwealth which presents a sparse and 
impoverished population, in competition with a rich and populous rival, wdl 
come by the worse in spite of her martial virtues ; and may make her account 
to be dependent and subordinate. Hence to develope the South is one of the 
plainest duties of patriotism. To increase its riches is one way to increase its 
power of self-protection. And a knowledge, and hardy, diligent practice of 
the industries of production are among the civic virtues which it behooves the 
New South to cultivate. So much is to be asserted on that side. . 

But on the other side the deduction that all our section has to do is to imi- 
tate the conquering section in that one of its qualities by which it got wealth; 
to make the appliances of production the all in all; to exclaim as so many do 
of factories, and mines, and banks, and stock boards, and horse-powers of 
steam, and patent machines, "These be thy gods, O Israel !" This would be a 
deadly mistake. Does not history teach that " wealth is the sinews of war?" 
yes, not seldom ; but it teaches at least as often that wealth and material civili- 
zation have been the emasculators of nations and the incitements of their ene- 
mies at once, only ensuring the deeper destruction for the rich and cultivated 
people. Our own overthrow is near at hand to teach us this lesson, for we 
were the richer section subjugated by the poorer, which was shrewd enough to 



Addless. 13 

hie on the pauper proletaries of a hungry world upon our wealth as their prey. 
Do some of you exclaim: " What, the South the richer section ?" Very likely 
many of you are already so indoctrinated in that tuition of lies, against which 
I shall have to caution you anon, that this will be news to you. Nevertheless 
is it true; the South was by one-quarter if not one-third, the richer section, as 
was proved by the stubborn evidence of the census returns of the government 
itself, as managed by our enemies. 

The wisdom of the New South, then, must be in pursuing the sharp line 
which divides the neglect from the idolatry of riches. If they be pursued as 
an end instead of a means, they become your ruin instead of your deliverance. 
If riches when acquired are employed to enervate your manhood with costly 
pomps and luxuries instead of being consecrated to the noble uses of charity 
and public spirit, the richer the New South becomes the weaker she will be. 
The problem you have to learn is how to combine the possession of great 
wealth with the personal practice of simplicity, hardihood and self-sacrifice. 
That people which makes selfish, material good its God, is doomed. In this 
world of sin the spirit of heroic self-sacrifice is the essential condition of na- 
tional greatness and happiness. The only sure wealth of the State is in cul- 
tured, heroic men, who intelligently know their duty and are calmly prepared 
to sacrifice all else, including life, to maintain the right. Well then did the 
President of the Confederacy utter these golden words, that " the spirit of self- 
sacrifice is the crown of the civic virtues." I know that there is a generation, 
" O, how lofty are their eyes and their eyelids lifted up," who boast that their 
cuteness is in pursuing the "main chance," and who flout this virtue of disin- 
terestedness as a weak folly ; and yet for lack of this virtue their prosperity is 
ever perishing and their material civilization is ever, like the tawdry pyrotech- 
nics of some popular feast, burning out its own splendors into ashes, darkness 
and a villainous stench of brimstone. The New South then needs wealth, but 
it also needs men, high-minded men, undebauched by wealth, who, like the 
"high privates" of the Confederate ranks, shall know how to postpone ease 
and the delights of culture for the invincible endurance of hardship and danger. 

2. Subjugation presents to the honorable conquered man another alternative 
of temptations. The one is that of moral disgust, prompting him to turn with 
proud disdain from all concern with, public affairs, and wrap himself like a her- 
mit in the folds of his own self-respect. It is to the best natures that this is 
most alluring ; how attractive is the thought of thus easing one's infinite dis- 
gust-.? How plausible the argument which says: Let those who have by 
fraud or force usurped the helm bear the responsibility of wrecking the ship, 
but the error of this resort is that it neglects the claims of patriotism and 
roll- the State, in the moment of her need, of the virtues and faculties most 
essential to her deliverance. These unbending spirits who cannot be recon- 
ciled to disgrace are the very ones that can now be least spared. To conquer 
the burning repugnance to all the loathsome incidents of misconception, slimy 
slander, corruption and ingratitude with which one must meet in serving a State 
under the eclipse of subjugation, this may be a cross as bitter as death. But 



14 Address. 

how many of our noblest and best have already borne the cross of death in the 
.^anie cause ? 

The al i is yet more seductive to the more suple tempera- 

ment. This is to exaggerate and pervert the plea of acquiescence in the inev- 
itable; to cry, "Oh there is no use nor sense in contending against fate," and 
on this argument to act the trin I turncoat. How much this 

to the pliable temper? .'...: i be, how profitable to tl [t 

sweet a relief ti r.cli a mind experiences at being ever in the 

ius and the unsuccessful minority. Ah, how 
;- it to such a man to hold up the standard of principle when it is unsustained 
by the breeze of popularity ! Poor soul, how his arms ache, and how do 
crave rest in the arms 'if th con A maj >ritv. 

But even by the light of that policy, which such men make their pole-star, 
it would be better, while recognizing the inevitable, still to cleave to moral 
■ i:cy and principle. Fur I surmise that when you seek a market for . 
icities in die forum of the new regime, i rs will tell you that 

turncoats are decidedly a drug in that market. 'Ike demand is utterly over- 
id, the market glutted. It is the men who have convictions and who 
cleave to them, who are the artii le in demand ; in demand even will 
adversaries, who, themselves, have no principles. For such men, however 
venal, soon learn the truth that the turncoat who could not be tru ted to cleave 
to his principles, can as littl Led to i the ma tei who h 

him. 

3. It behooves the New South, in dismissing the anin 
see to it that they retain ail that was true in its prim ipl or 1 nnobling in its 
example . I here are those pi 
' Let us 1 ics arc all anti 

tical significance. Let u.s [orgi ; tons of the past. We are in a new 

world. Its ncv csrnus." I rejoin: Be sure that the former 

id before yoi There arc : 

die without the death of th 1 ol I their 

Take care that you do not bury too muc ■ 
m do not i mi y the 
. whether successful 01 lor of your race and 

the i. ; their vii \\ aid bisloi tes. W'ilj 

you i ' : sad their noble army 

. . f the God of 

h? 
The: which is vital I 

citizens of the South. This i-. be shall no party to 

h hire, a perverted hist.: , 1 Phis is a mistake of which 

. peril. Willi ail the astute activity of their race, 0111 
rain every nerve to pie-.i ccupy tl I America v. ith the I 

rs which suits the ol th ii a urpation. With a gigantic 

>weep of mendacity, this literature aims to falsify or misrepresent everything ; 
the very facts of history, the principles of the f inner Constitution as admitted 



Address. 15 

in the days oi freedom by a]] statesmen of all parlies ; the characters and n 
tives ol ourpatriots; the purpos the very essential nann 

and virtues and vices. Th I nmercial and political ascen- 

dancy is exerted lo fill th with this false literature. come up, 

like the Egypt, into oui hou ;, our bed chambci ding 

troughs. Now, against thi I ms ] solemnly warn young men 

(if the South, not for our -. a. Even if the mi m ■ of the 

defeated had no rights; if historical truth had no prerogatives; if it were the 
same to von that the sires wl ins, and \vh - you 

bear, be written down as traitors by the pen of slan li roi hi ill it i- 

itial to youi own futt re tl a shall lea; i . ay of the past truly. 

the institutions which are to be, how like those which have been, 

must have a causal relation to them: mu 

1. The chrysali i , none the less its traits de- 

termine those of the gorgeous il like a tree, yet its 

termines the shape and a est. '1 1 - 

configm ilar from tliat i 

I ill. : ■ ■ i rois- 

. . : misstates the position rr in 

his prediction of thei So if pub] ratify 

their spite, or revenge, or lust ■ .. er by misi 

nts, they therebj n 

i ating that future which can oni; I to ihis. If you 

would not be mere blliridi rcrs i 1 nder- 

tm si found 
You will < i, ot from a G a Henry 

Wilson, but from a Si While you do ; our judg- 

ment hoodwinked 

still i he mal I i :ans 

ho tl as a political ring. Our 

its the stran ;e party, who think they can cir- 

; facts and fal- 
vately buddii g a wl l of i I itu- 

tion of light for dark] I and evil for 

lling tha%ma as servant, that patri 

i rue, law-pi I ^m, 

i I i ai wish to 1" i 
thrii n ried Troy ben< ith th< final mountains of I and 

; i with these irch They are but . them- 

ainst that unchan d who has said: "Tin 

but the lip of truth shall h 
I ii:'\ : adniitl ed, yi mi ! and laws m 

but ' i ice and i i Be loyal ; 

rgencies, and you will a 
exists in you, it will, it must manifest itself most plainly in reverence and en- 
thusiasm for the heroic and the self-sacrificing of your own people and State. 



16 Aderess. 

Their actions have placed the right before you incorporate, with all the definite- 
> of outline and vividness of coloring which belong to concrete realities. 
Their actions concern your hearts by virtue of all the ties of neighborhood and 
patriotism. As long as the hearts of the New South thrill with the generous 
though defeated endurance of the men of 1S61; as long as they cherish these 
martyrs of constitutional liberty as the glory of their State and its history, you 
will be safe from any base decadence. If the generation that is to come ever 
learns to be ashamed of these men because they were overpowered by fate, that 
will be the moral death of Virginia, a death on which there will wait no resur- 
rection. But I do not fear this. 

I recall what my own eyes witnessed at the last great civic pomp in which I 
was present. This was the installment of that statuti of Jackson near our State 
capitol, which Virginia received as the tribute of British statesmanship and 
culture to her illustrious dead. At this ceremonial there were gathered almost the 
whole intelligence and beauty of what was left of the old commonwealth. As 
the long procession wound through the streets marshaled and headed by General 
Joseph E. Johnston, under the mild glory of our October sun, while the atmos- 
phere was palpitating with military music and the whole city was gone upon its 
house-lops, it was easy to perceive that all eyes and all hearts were centering upon 
one sole part of the pageant, and this was not the illustrious figure that headed it 
the commander in so many historical battles, bestriding his charger with his inimi- 
table martial grace ; nor was it the cluster containing the remnant of Jackson's 
staff. \Ye might have supposed that we would receive some reflected distinc- 
tion from the luminary to which we had been satellites so near, and that some 
romantic curiosity might direct itself to those who had habitually seen him un- 
der fire, heard, and borne those orders which had decided memorable victories, 
and bivouacked under the same blanket with him; but no eye sought us. Then 
came hobbling a company of two hundred and thirty grizzled men with empty 
sleeves, and wooden legs, and scarred faces, and hands twisted into every dis- 
tortion which the fiery fancy of tire rifle-ball could invent, clad in the rough 
garbcf a laboring yoemanry, their faces bronzed with homely toil; this was 
the company for which every eye waited, and as it passed the mighty throng 
was moved as the trees of the forest are moved by the wind, the multitudinous 
white arms waved their superb welcome, and the thundering cheer rolled with 
the column from end to end of the great city. It was the remnant of the 
Stonewall Brigade ? That was the explanation. This was the tribute which 
the son^, the daughters, the mothers of Virginia paid to sturdy heroism in defeat. 
And as I saw this my heart said with an exultant bound, " There is life in the 
old land yet ! " 



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